High School Students Los Angeles

In ancient Greece, athletes competed in 10 grueling track and field events in one day, testing not only their skills, but their determination and will to win. For the past 16 years, Valley students have joined others around the country competing in a similar event--a decathlon of the mind. On Saturday, 531 Los Angeles Unified School District students from 49 high schools, six magnet schools and two learning centers will compete in the 17th annual Academic Decathlon.

Students at Birmingham High School are giving back to their community using tools as simple as a needle and thread. For the past few months, almost 200 students at the school have been measuring and cutting fabric, lining up edges and sewing seams to help put a smile on a child's face.

There were badly needed presents of pajamas, shoes and playsuits for the babies. And a desperately needed gift of hope for the young parents. That's the reason no one went away empty-handed Tuesday as a Watts group offered a hand to teenage parents who are struggling to stay in school while they raise infants and toddlers. Gaily wrapped boxes and bags filled with clothing were distributed to 120 babies brought to an auditorium off 103rd Street.

The California Interscholastic Federation on Tuesday reversed an earlier decision and agreed to hold one heat of the preliminary cross-county finals on a Thursday, enabling a top-ranked Orthodox Jewish school to attend. Yeshiva University High School of Los Angeles, which leads its league in cross-country, had asked the group's executive committee to change one heat of the event on Nov. 15 because it is the Jewish Sabbath and the boys would not be able to attend.

Students who run cross-country for Yeshiva University High School of Los Angeles are hoping that after a hearing today, they can have the same opportunity as any other team with their winning record: a chance to compete in the November championships. The problem is that the California Interscholastic Federation has held the preliminary and final meets on Saturdays, the Jewish Sabbath.

Stirring up teenagers' long-vanished sense of pride in a community marred by images of poverty and violence, teachers in Boyle Heights banded together to give students a firsthand sense of their neighborhood's rich multicultural history. As part of a Getty Research Institute project called Mapping Boyle Heights, 30 Roosevelt High School students set to the pavement recently searching for clues of cultures that had long faded from their community.

For most teens, graduation is the crowning glory to their high school years. But for others, the chance to win a national competition may be a far more glittering crown. That's why Megwynn White, 18, of Sun Valley, was on a Minneapolis stage last week competing in a national speech tournament while her classmates at Cleveland High School were picking up diplomas. "I was pretty upset at first about missing graduation because I felt there was no closure to high school," White said.

In Los Angeles, the Constitutional Rights Foundation, a civic education organization, provides training and funding for many service-learning projects both in and out of school. Last year at Roosevelt High School, pupils in one program wondered why the student body was nearly all Latino and if it had always been that way.